[PRP] Sit, down, stay (Tink x golem!Leslie)

[Rejam]

It wasn't that Catinka was unfamiliar with minipets. Her room was festooned in Calaptera and tiny toothed bells, but those were more--ambiance, than anything.

And of course she'd been exposed to other people's minipets. She knew they existed. She had herself handed out an alarmingly large number of them during the carnival. But she hadn't really felt any sort of personal attachment to one until Merry had, beaming, placed the translucent, yawning Scareon kit into her arms. Love at first sight. Instant adoration. Its general attitude towards her might be best described as patient.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, crunchy leaves clinging to her heavy woolen skirts, Catinka frowned over her lapful of FEAR candies and repeated herself.

"Down," she said sternly, or at least as sternly as Catinka could manage. Boots, unmoved, gazed at her and gently waved its tail through the leaves--actually through them.

She was oblivious. This was her baseline state, but with something actually holding her attention she was even more oblivious than usual.

cherno astra

yes leslie come step on its tigertail, or trip over her. tink thinks that tripping over people is how you say hello in amity.

 

[its me debz]

It was day two of his golem activities, and Leslie wasn't quite adjusted to his body. Since he'd actually hadn't signed up as a student or whatever, he didn't have a dorm room. Which meant one thing:

Sleeping outside.

How hard could it possibly be to get allowed to enroll, anyway? What kind of paperwork did a creepy school require? Was it written in blood?

Stupid, inane questions flooded his mind, proof that Leslie really had no business being in Halloween until he researched it a little better. They had him so occupied that he had, once more, physically run into some wee little thing.

"Jesus christ," Leslie grunted from the ground, where he'd landed flat on his chest, "what'd I hit this time." He rolled over onto his back to see a tiny girl, and a...

Minipet. Outside of its cage. "Huh. Is that your uh, pet? Or whatever?"

Never mind that he'd just barreled over the girl. Never mind that he'd probably stepped on the minipet, too.

rejam

 

[Rejam]

He clearly had. Boots gazed at him with that particular brand of feline reproach that seemed to be universal across FEAR/flesh boundaries, bristling and indignant. For her part, the girl gazed in bafflement at him.

"That was a good one," she said, "but I've never tried it sitting down. I could headbutt you, maybe," she suggested timidly.

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

Whenever he concentrated, Leslie noticed that his nose tended to do the same little twitching thing that cats did. He did just that at the minipet, offering it a bared teeth growl in return-- which was made much more effective by his feline appearance, but Leslie would have done it anyway.

Swiveling his head to give the girl a closer look, he realised she only had one arm, as well as some hooves. "What," he said, "don't ******** do that." He stood, brushing leaves off of himself, towering over her. She was just as tiny as the other one he'd met, damn.

And then, Leslie gestured at her arm. "Someone take a bite out of you or some s**t?"

rejam

 

[Rejam]

Boots was, in a word, unimpressed. It yawned, as if to say: look how much bigger my teeth are. Which, proportionately, might have been accurate--but they were still little needles.

Tink looked up (and up, and up) at him, and then at her arm, and then back at him, with the same gentle, stupid bewilderment. It was like someone had shot Mikael up with tranqs. "It's always been like that," she said politely, not even remotely offended. "I think it just sorta--came that way. Like the blood," she added with a dreamy, distracted smile and without any attempts to clarify what she meant by that. "You're awfully tall."

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

Crazy and creepy did not, in fact, seem to stop at the shores of Deus Ex. Maybe, he thought, this was just how everyone was. Jesus christ on a bike.

"What blood?" he asked, blinking slowly. "Also I know, it's the ******** worst. I thought it wouldn't be, but I keep forgetting I can't see anything below my ******** chest. I'm like, almost seven ******** feet tall. This is ridiculous."

rejam

 

[Rejam]

"Oh," she said, and she didn't say it like she'd had a sudden realization. Quite the opposite, in fact. While her attention was distracted Boots began to help itself to some of the FEAR candies that had been jolted out of her lap by Leslie's rude arrival. "What size are you normally?"

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

"Uhh," Leslie said, eloquent, and held his hand up to a bit above Tink's head. "Around there or some s**t. I know you ******** can change too, right? The difference between looking like a human and...whatever the ******** you are?"

rejam

 

[Rejam]

She continued to stare at him while Boots worked away at a FEAR candy with an air of great contentment. The Scareon made a squeaking sound of dismay as it was interrupted in this by Tink scooping it up and then handing it to Leslie, matter of factly.

She reached up to loosen a skull-shaped pin on her heavy shawl, and where there had been an approximately-girl-shaped person there was now a faintly-translucent lamb, missing a foreleg. It was not quite as adorable and harmless-seeming as a normal lamb: blood matted the wool around its neck, as did clumps of wet earth, and its eyes were filmed and terrified despite the fact that it spoke--it suggested a plaintive bleat although it was not, somehow--and did so totally calmly. "What sort of a thing are you?" she asked politely. "Also maybe that is why I always run into things. I never thought about it. Sometimes I sort of run through them, though. My feet. If I'm not paying attention sometimes they run through them and then I forget halfway through and fall over." She said this consolingly, as if to commiserate with the nekomata's undoubtedly-frequently failings. See? We're all human. Or, well...

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

Leslie wasn't sure what he expected to go down, but he held the minipet. He stared at it, and it stared back, and by the time he was done making sure to assert his dominance (or trying to, at any rate)-- there was no longer a girl there.

In fact, there was barely anything there at all. Just a...thing, tiny and missing one arm as well. It stank of old blood, a scent too familiar for Leslie's liking. It made him uneasy.

"A cat?" he guessed, not quite directly looking at the ...girl...lamb...thing. (Unnerving.) They didn't really get info cards explaining what their golem was, although that would have been nice. "Seems like a pain in the a**. Why do your feet do that?"

rejam

 

[Rejam]

"I'm unlucky," she returned mournfully, but then she cheered considerably--or at least her voice did; her face remained unchanged (terrified, despairing)--at a sudden thought. "Are you unlucky too? Cats," she clarified vaguely. "Maybe we're like. Cousins. Spiritually. Thank you for holding Boots." This last non sequitur was delivered quite as though it was entirely relevant to the rest of what she'd said.

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

"Isn't that what you're like, supposed to be or some s**t? Isn't everything here unlucky?" Leslie shrugged at the question, refusing to prod it with any depth. Unlucky ********>, but not like how she meant.

The minipet looked up at him, and Leslie thought that if he had a face, it would have been a scowl. "Yeah yeah. I don't think sheep are really related to cats, dude. How about you change back into a person so I can stop holding this ******** thing."

rejam

 

[Rejam]

And just like that, she obliged: an approximately-girl-shaped person standing where the sheep had been, affixing her skullpin back to her scarf and apparently unhindered by her lack of a second arm. She moved like she'd had a lifetime to get used to the lack, and indeed she had. Sort of. For a given quantity of "life."

"Sheep can be related to cats I think. Maybe," she added shyly, leery of appearing too assured. She reached for the Scareon. "I won it, you know. At a carnival sort of a thing. I hit a tiny little bullseye but I had my eyes closed because sometimes I am bad at being unlucky." She said this very mournfully, as if being bad at being unlucky were a constant trial.

cherno astra

 

[its me debz]

Talk about disorienting. It was like watching the air itself bend to take her shape, instead of the other way around. Like the universe just allowed for such a ridiculous thing. Leslie was glad she seemed too slow to request he do the same kind of trick.

"Sounds like a winning thing to be," he said, and promptly tossed her the minipet as if it were a basketball-- remembering too late that she had, in fact, only one arm.

"s**t."

rejam

 

[Rejam]

Fortunately for the Scareon and unfortunately for Tink, it had claws that, despite their shimmering transparency, were substantial enough. Given that Catinka was wearing a sweater of coarsely-knitted wool, this resulted in stitches yanked free and loops left in the minipet's wrathful path, and Catinka examined the results woefully as it settled onto her shoulder, bristling and hissing at Leslie.

"Sometimes I'm still unlucky though," she observed, apparently not blaming him at all.

cherno astra